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The View from My Kitchen

Benvenuti! I hope you enjoy il panorama dalla mia cucina Italiana -- "the view from my Italian kitchen,"-- where I indulge my passion for Italian food and cooking. From here, I share some thoughts and ideas on food, as well as recipes and restaurant reviews, notes on travel, and a few garnishes from a lifetime in the entertainment industry.

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Grazie mille!

Thursday, December 18, 2014

A History of Cookbooks

From Clay Tablets to Digital
Applications

I tend to stay slightly behind the
curve when it comes to the latest cool technology. After all, you're
reading the scribblings of a guy who didn't own a color TV until the
late '70s. But with all the new whiz bang cooking applications coming
out for them there com-puter things, I may have to catch up a little
quicker.

Actually, I am already a part of the
electronic revolution. My collezione di ricette (that's
“recipe collection” for you non-Italian speaking types) is stored
on both my laptop and my tablet and it's also backed up on a flash
drive, just in case. But I still have a pretty fair number of good
old-fashioned cookbooks living in a bookcase parked in the corner of
my kitchen. Some are as new as the latest from Mario Batali and some
are golden oldies that my mother acquired when she was a young
homemaker. It's kind of fun to compare the old and the new and
see the changes in tastes, trends, and basic ingredients that have
occurred in the last sixty years or so. In fact, cookbooks are among
the more mutable reference works in our society, constantly changing
to reflect not only current tastes and trends, but also indicating
advances and innovations in culinary techniques and equipment.
Nowhere, for instance, will you find the word “microwave” in any
of my mother's venerable old volumes.

It seems
mankind has been eating for quite some time now, and while there is
no documentation of recipes being painted on cave walls, there are
some carved in stone. Or, at least, in clay. According to Andrew
Dalby (Food in the Ancient World From A-Z, [Routledge:London]
2003), Mesopotamian recipe collections found on three cuneiform
tablets currently housed at Yale University date back to the
seventeenth century BC and are considered to be the world's oldest
known recipes.

Like our own Bobby Flay, the Greeks and
Romans had culinary superstars who recorded their recipes. Greek poet
and author Archestratus produced his masterpiece, Hēdypatheia
(“Life of Luxury”), around 350 BC. Rather than a “cookbook”
in the classic sense, however, it was a work about food
and where to find good food in the Mediterranean world. It was
intended to be read or recited at banquets and feasts, not used in
actual kitchens.

“De re coquinaria”
("On the subject of cooking") is the early Latin title
given to the fourth century Roman cookbook now best known as
“Apicius.”
Sometimes attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius, a first century Roman
gourmand, and sometimes credited to “Apicius Caelius,” from the
letters “API” and “CAE” found on the title page of a ninth
century edition, “Apicius” is
intended for use in the kitchen and is arranged categorically by
ingredient, much as a modern cookbook would be. The ten books, or
chapters, deal with the experienced cook; minces; foods from the
garden; miscellaneous dishes; legumes; fowl; fancy dishes;
quadrupeds; seafood; and fish.

Julia Child became
famous in the 1960s for her “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,”
but in 1394, “La Ménagier de Paris” was
touting recipes for
“Blank Manng” (aka
Chicken Blancmange) and “Payn Fondewe”
(or Pain Fondue). One of the first known French cookbooks, it also
contained instructions for preparing frogs and snails, delicacies
still associated with French cuisine.

Around the same
time, England's Richard II commissioned “Forme of Cury,” a book
on how food was to be prepared and served to the noble classes.
Although compiled around 1390, the book did not acquire its curious
title until an antiquarian named Samuel Pegge published it from an
old manuscript in 1780. Here's a sample recipe:

“For to make
Gronden Benes – Take benes and dry hem in a nost or in an Ovene and
hulle hem wele and wyndewe out (?)e hulk and wayshe hem clene an do
hem to see(?) in gode broth an ete hem with Bacon.” [The ? in
parentheses represents a character my keypad will not duplicate.]

Basically, here we
have a poor man's dish of ground beans dried in a kiln (“nost”),
hulled and winnowed (“wyndewe”) from their shells and washed,
then soaked in a prepared broth and eaten with bacon. Sounds yummy,
no?

Long
before Giada De Laurentiis, Lidia Bastianich, and Mario Batali set
pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard), Renaissance Italian cooking
master Martino di Rossi, or Maestro Martino of Como, considered by
some to be the first “celebrity chef,” gave the culinary world
his “Libro de Arte Coquinaria” (“The
Art of Cooking”). Written around 1465, Maestro Martino's work is
the first known culinary guide to specify ingredients, amounts,
cooking times and techniques, as well as specific utensils.

The printing press
revolutionized the cookbook industry by essentially creating it.
Whereas handwritten books on cookery were previously held only by the
very wealthy and utilized only by cooks in their employ, the advent
of commercial printing brought affordable cookbooks to common
kitchens.

Bartolomeo
Platina's “De honesta voluptate et valetudine”
("On Honest Pleasure and Good Health.") published in Venice in 1475, is generally considered to
be the first printed cookbook.
Bartolomeo Scappi's “Opera” (“Works”)
followed in the next century, depicting culinary activities in the
Vatican kitchen where the Italian cook was employed as a private chef
to Pope Pius V. Scappi was among the first cookbook authors to define
regional Italian cuisine.

Of
course, in the world outside the palaces and mansions, women were in
charge of cooking the daily meals. But what cookbooks there were were
primarily written by men for the use of men employed in the kitchens
of the palaces and mansions. That began to change with the
publication in 1670 of "The
Queen-Like Closet, or Rich Cabinet, Stored with All Manner of Rare
Receipts for Preserving, Candying and Cookery: Very Pleasant and
Beneficial to All Ingenious Persons of the Female Sex",
written in England by Hannah Woolley (sometimes “Wolley). The first
female cookbook author, Woolley's books were the first published for
the benefit of servants working for the upper classes as well as for
those of a lower social station. Many of her recipes were scaled down
versions of the elaborate fare enjoyed by the upper crust. More than
a cookbook, the tome also contained household tips and medical
advice, which some modern critics opine was probably necessary after
attempting some of her recipes.

The
first American cookbook was also authored by a woman. Amelia Simmons,
who identified herself as “An American Orphan,” published
“American
Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and
vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts,
puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the
imperial plum to plain cake: Adapted to this country, and all grades
of life”
in Hartford, Connecticut in 1796. Although not the first cookbook
printed in America, it was the first written by
an
American for an
American audience. (Previous books, such as 1742's “The
Compleat Housewife,”
were reprints of various British publications.) Simmons was the first
to attempt to incorporate indigenous American ingredients, such as
turkey, corn, potatoes, cranberries, and squash into her recipes. A
popular book, it saw printing for thirty years following its initial
appearance.

Had
the Food Network existed in the nineteenth century, Britain's first
“celebrity chef,” Alexis Benoist Soyer, would likely have been
one of its stars. Chef de cuisine at London's Reform Club, Soyer once
catered an intimate little breakfast for two thousand celebrating the
coronation of Queen Victoria. He also pioneered cooking with gas and
advocated ovens with adjustable temperature controls. Like any good
Food Network chef, he had his own product line that included a
revolutionary table top stove, which he called his “magic stove.”
And, like any good Food Network chef, he wrote popular cookbooks for
the masses. His “A
Shilling Cookery for the People: Embracing an Entirely New System of
Plain Cookery, and Domestic Economy”
was probably the world's first bestselling cookbook. Published in
1855 by George Routledge and Company, it sold more than 100,000
copies, mostly to the target audience described in its introduction:
“the artisan, mechanic, and cottager.” Although a chef to the
stars of his day, Soyer was greatly concerned by hunger and nutrition
among the poorer classes. The creator of the first practical “soup
kitchen,” Soyer wrote his recipes based on basic nutritional needs
utilizing ingredients readily available to the common household.

These
few references represent only a glimpse into the hundreds of
cookbooks generally available by the late nineteenth century. As in
today's market, there were numerous published volumes on all aspects
of cookery from high to low, complex to simple. Examples include
Elizabeth Smith Miller's “In the Kitchen”(1875);
Abby Fisher's “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern
Cookery” (1881);
and “Favorite Dishes. A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery
Book” compiled in Chicago in 1893 by Carrie V. Shuman and
consisting of recipes provided by “Lady Managers of the World's
Columbian Exposition.”

But by far the most popular and
influential cookbook of the time was “The Boston Cooking School
Cookbook,” published in 1896 by Fannie Merritt Farmer. Still in
print more than a hundred years later, the groundbreaking tome came
simply to be called “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.”

Born in Massachusetts on March 23,
1857, Fannie was being groomed by her progressive and
education-oriented parents to be formally schooled at a college, but
her academic future was jeopardized by a paralytic stroke suffered at
the age of sixteen. Bedridden and unable to walk for many years,
Fannie eventually recovered sufficiently, although she retained a
pronounced limp for the rest of her life, to take employment as a
“mother's helper” with a local family. She developed a strong
interest in cooking, and at age thirty sought enrollment in the
influential Boston Cooking School, one of the schools on the cutting
edge of the domestic science movement then sweeping the country. An
extremely adept student, she was kept on after graduation as an
assistant to the director. In 1894, Fannie took over as the school's
principal.

In a sense, the publication of “The
Boston Cooking School Cookbook” was the birth of the modern
cookbook. Fannie Farmer more or less codified the modern system of
measurements employed in cooking and it was through her influence
that the recipe format still in use today was developed.

Prior to her groundbreaking work,
recipes – or “receipts,” as they were often called – were
inexact, to say the least. A “pinch” of this, a “dash” of
that, a “smidgen” of something else, a “piece of butter the
size of a walnut,” “sufficient salt,” “bake until it looks
done;” these were the common expressions used in recipes of earlier
days. Fannie Farmer's cookbook revolutionized cooking by introducing
the use of standardized measuring spoons and cups as well as level
measurement, leading to her sobriquet “the mother of level
measurements.” In publishing her book, Farmer expanded on a
previous work published twelve years earlier by former principal Mary
J. B. Lincoln. Although she was sometimes criticized for not
acknowledging Lincoln's contributions, her work was directed more to
the home cook than to the scholar, as Lincoln's book had been.
Farmer's book combined essential recipes with basic food science. The
first chapter of the book, entitled simply “Food,” states: “Food
is anything which nourishes the body.” It then goes on to enumerate
the elements of which the human body is comprised and the percentages
thereof, before describing the necessity of food as an agent of
growth, repair, and energy. The various sections are meticulously
detailed, giving explanations that go on for pages about the hows and
whys of the way foods and their component ingredients work.

The recipes themselves establish the
modern format of title, ingredient list, and procedure. Most previous
recipe collections assumed a reader's familiarity with a given dish
and merely provided basic reminders of how the dish was to be
prepared.

Still available in print, a 1918
version of Fannie Farmer's legendary cookbook can be found online at
http://www.bartleby.com/87/.
According to the site, Bartleby.com
chose the 1918 edition because it was the last edition of the
cookbook authored completely by Farmer.

The
next leap forward in cookbook history came in the form of “The
Joy of Cooking.”
Self-published by St. Louis homemaker Irma S. Rombauer in 1931, the
book has sold more than 18 million copies and is considered a staple
not only in home kitchens, but in professional kitchens, as well. It
has been revised and updated many times over the years. The original
edition included sections on cooking squirrel, raccoon, and opossum,
for instance. After Rombauer's death in 1962, various editors,
working with and without Rombauer's descendents, contributed to the
content of the book, often creating controversy over whether or not
the edition in question was “real.” “Real” or not, a 75th
Anniversary Edition was released in 2006 and the book remains an
extremely valuable and popular resource for both the beginner and the
more experienced cook. Considered a collectable by some, detailed
information on each of the eight authorized editions is available
online at http://www.thejoykitchen.com
.

Of
course, no discussion of the history of cookbooks would be complete
without the inclusion of the landmark volume compiled by Julia Child
under the title "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

American
by birth, educated at Smith College, and a member of the OSS (Office
of Strategic Services) during WWII, Julia was living in Paris with
her diplomat husband, Paul, when she was inspired by French cuisine.
Enrolling at the famed Le Cordon Bleu, Julia embarked on an amazing
culinary career. Her 1961 publication of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", a collaborative effort with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, was
a major milestone in that career. Originally rejected by publishers
for its encyclopedic nature, the 734 page opus ultimately caught the
eye of the Alfred A. Knopf publishing firm. Its release was an
immediate hit, due in part to its timeliness.

Americans
in the late '50s and early '60s were undergoing a “Continental
chic” phase in which nearly anything Italian or French was
instantly in vogue. There was a French chef in the Kennedy White
House and French cooking was all the rage. Julia's timely book
capitalized on the wave sweeping through fashionable American
kitchens.

More
than just an instrument of a fad, though, "Mastering the Art...." was and is a truly remarkable work. Just how remarkable is best
explained by Knopf Senior Editor Judith Jones, credited with
“discovering” Julia Child: “I realized how
totally inadequate the few books that dealt with French food really
were. They were simply compendiums of shorthand recipes and there was
no effort to instruct the home cook. Techniques were not explained,
proper ingredients were not discussed, and there was no indication in
a recipe of what to expect and how to rectify mistakes. So the home
cook, particularly an American home cook, was flying blind.

Yet here were all the answers. I pored
over the recipe, for instance, for a beef stew and learned the right
cuts of meat for braising, the correct fat to use (one that would not
burn), the importance of drying the meat and browning it in batches,
the secret of the herb bouquet, the value of sautéing the garnish of
onions and mushrooms separately. I ran home to make the recipe--and
my first bite told me that I had finally produced an authentic French
boeuf bourguignon--as good as one I could get in Paris. This, I was
convinced, was a revolutionary cookbook, and if I was so smitten,
certainly others would be.”

Others
were, indeed, smitten and, more than fifty years later, the book
remains the ultimate authority for preparing authentic French dishes
in American kitchens. One caveat: this may not be a book for the
casual microwave cook raised on Betty Crocker or Better Homes and
Gardens. One of the aspects of Julia Child's work that sets it apart
from so many others is the fact that each and every recipe is
meticulously detailed. The ingredient list and instructions for the
aforementioned boeuf bourguignon run three pages in length. “No
substitutions,” Julia cautions in the ten-page treatise on French
bread found in Volume 2, the 1970 sequel to her classic work. Julia
personally tested and re-tested every recipe. She weighed and
measured not only the raw ingredients, but the cooked results. She
timed everything. She checked temperatures on everything. She
examined, re-examined, and adjusted her methodology. Her attention to
detail is legendary. So, while "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is a superb reference work, it may not necessarily be the ideal first
cookbook for the culinary novice.

Today,
cookbooks are everywhere. They are available in every price range.
They cover every possible culinary interest – and some impossible
ones. I, for example, have a copy of the "Star Trek Cookbook" in my collection. A little closer to our century, "The Astronaut's Cookbook" enables home cooks to simulate the foods today's space travelers eat.
Want to eat like “The King?” "The I Love Elvis Cookbook," "Fit for a King: The Elvis Presley Cookbook," or "Are You Hungry Tonight?: Elvis' Favorite Recipes" might be just what you're looking for. Cookbooks “authored” by
singers, actors, sports figures, and celebrity chefs overload
bookstore shelves. Political candidates courting support have
produced cookbooks chock full of “traditional family recipes.”
Political causes have cookbooks, too. Witness “Political
Palate: A Feminist Vegetarian Cookbook.” Churches
and civic organizations raise tons of money selling cookbooks full of
sometimes questionable member-submitted recipes. You'd likely
overload your CPU if you tried to download every recipe available
online. If you really want to go “old school,” copies of many of
the ancient works I referenced in this article are also as close as
your computer. And let's not even get into the area of monthly,
bi-monthly, quarterly, and annual recipe-laden magazines populating
display racks in every supermarket in America.

So
why not not ditch the cans, frozen trays and microwave pouches?
Instead, gather some ingredients, grab a cookbook and cook something
“for real” tonight. As you've now learned, people have been doing
it for ages.

Who Am I (and Why Should You Care)?

I've been around long enough to know a little bit about a lot of things. That said, there are a couple of things I know a little bit more about; food and entertainment.

I've been cooking since I was a kid -- a very long time, indeed -- and I've spent most of my adult life in the entertainment industry.

I've been writing about one or the other of these topics since the '80s, and I have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers over the years. I also spent the better part of two decades behind a microphone as the host of my own radio talk show.

Does all of this make me an expert? Nah! But I'm certainly entitled to my opinion -- and so are you! :-)